


Sardines

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, MCU Bingo, Prompt: Under the Bleachers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 19:56:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15298890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: When a successful mission leaves Daisy unexpectedly reeling with feelings from her past, she needs somewhere to hide. And some friends, to help her through the darkness to the other side.-Fluffy hurt-comfort. Rated T for mild coarse language, and mild references to childhood trauma.





	Sardines

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for [@mcubingo](https://mcubingo.tumblr.com/)'s "AOS Team >> Under the Bleachers" square, as well as combing a few prompts for @liz-a-bell on tumblr.
> 
> I'm still accepting other prompts (here or @theclaravoyant on tumblr), but am prioritising those that will help me fill my [bingo squares](http://theclaravoyant.tumblr.com/post/174958815476/prompt-me-mcubingo-edition) (some are nsfw).
> 
> In the meantime, enjoy <3

“Thank you _so_ much, again!” Linda cried, pulling her daughter into a hug. Abby grinned and squeezed back, too overjoyed to bother with the politics of being a teenager. She’d had a long, hard, actually honest-to-goodness life-threatening day, and she wanted nothing more than Linda’s hugs and sappy music on the ride home, and Mark’s homemade pizza, and ice-cream in the lounge with the both of them. She couldn’t thank the Shield team enough.

Usually, Daisy would have been overjoyed watching such a reunion. Abby had performed bravely and her mother’s love was absolute and genuine – if nothing else, she could tell by Abby’s response to it. The pride and protectiveness and relief emanated from their embrace with a soft glow that Daisy would have thought would lift her spirits and help wash away the weight of fighting. Instead, and very much against her wish or will, she felt a rotting sort of feeling clawing at her heart. 

“Ex- excuse me,” she stammered, waving her leave. “I’m just going to get some water. Long day, you know how it is. I’ll catch you later, hm?”

The rest of the team looked subtly thrown by her odd behaviour. Had she caught sight of another enemy, perhaps, and didn’t want to alarm Abby and mother before she took care of it? Was she overwhelmed, having saved not just Abby, but in doing so, her entire school? Or was she maybe even injured and trying not to let on? She had, after all, taken the brunt of the fighting. No, it was this terrible sickness, that seemed to get worse the more she tried to figure out where it was coming from. It clawed up her throat like a panic attack, and when she ran to the drink fountains and drowned it in cool, if coppery, liquid, she felt like she was choking. 

Outside. She had to get outside. 

But she couldn’t very well go back to where they were. Whatever this was, it was coming from them. Was it jealousy? Was it fear? Had she been poisoned? No, surely not, she could remember feeling like this before and not dying, but how? When? 

Daisy staggered through the school and out the back, fortunately avoiding most people as it was long past home time. By the time she made it out to the other side, to the track field she felt like screaming. Like throwing herself into the air until pure suffocation lulled her anxiety into cloudy, dreamy, nothingness, and survival made all other thoughts into nothing. Unfortunately for her though, it seemed those who were not headed home had come out here for training. She saw the football team, running laps, and a couple of cheerleaders throwing each other into flips that turned her stomach. She couldn’t flee upwards with so many witnesses. Not least because it looked half like dying, unless she was to make a scene blasting herself out of the arena entirely and running off into the suburbs of this poor town for no reason other than a strange and sickening fear. Or was it loneliness? Or was it both?

And so, with nowhere else to go, Daisy’s body led her on autopilot to a very familiar place. A place where people had come to mourn and fear and skip and shoot up and cause mischief since the dawn of time. A place where you could hide even in a crowd; a place amidst some of the most everyday lives in the world, where anyone could take a time out, however small. 

She sat under the bleachers, hugged her knees, and waited for the feeling to pass. 

-

She was still waiting when a familiar set of footsteps approached. Stopped. She heard the crunch of the grass and grit and dirt, the hiccup in breath as her observer bent over to catch better sight of her, and made his way around. A few seconds later, Fitz knocked on one of the load-bearing pillars, with a soft but inquisitive expression. It wasn’t often, after all, that one found an agent – however newly minted – freaking out like this.

“Knock knock?” he posited, when he saw that Daisy didn’t seem to be entirely against his intrusion. At this, she rolled her eyes – and wiped at them, just in case, though she was not crying – and turned toward him, slowly uncurling from her ball as he came over and sat down beside her. A smile touched her lips as he glanced around himself uncertainly, afraid of gum or spider webs or who knows what, before turning back to her.

“How did you find me?” Daisy asked.

“Well, I couldn’t exactly check the girls toilets, could I?” Fitz returned. “You’ve been gone for a while, is all. Are you okay?” 

“Yeah.” Daisy snorted, shrugging it off, though the stormy sickness was not yet quelled. Fitz, of course, saw straight through this, so she pushed on and tried to forge him a vague but convincing answer, and failed. After all, how could she be vague about this feeling when she didn’t know what it was to be vague about? The more she tried to circumvent the point, the more she realised what the point was, and it was like sinking a hot knife into her chest. Tears finally spilled over as she realised exactly what it was she was feeling. 

“I don’t know what happened, I just- I saw Abby with Linda, how lovely they were, and it made me remember some… bad things. About growing up. I thought I’d forgotten what that rejection felt like, you know, I’m good now right? But something about that, it just reminded me, I’ve felt like this before. I had good parents, some of them, in the system. I had families I thought I would be with forever, and they thought I’d be with them too, and- and they sent me away anyway. Nobody told me anything. They rejected me over and over again, even the good ones, and it hurts _so much...”_

Fitz shuffled around in the dirt to sit beside her as she paused a moment in her speech to pull herself together. It wasn’t jealousy after all, or fear for Abby’s safety or her own. It was just a memory, buried for over a decade. The memory of an abandoned child. 

“You know they did it to keep you safe,” Fitz reminded her, as gently as he could. He took her hand, and squeezed it reassuringly. “Some of them, anyway, right? They loved you very much. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know that _now,”_ Daisy promised. “Fifteen year old me didn’t know that. Twelve year old me didn’t know that. Eight year old me didn’t know that.” 

Now Fitz was starting to tear up too. He, of course, had his own experiences with abandonment and rejection from his father, and with never feeling good enough. He hardly dared to imagine what it would have been like if, rather than helping him through it, his mother had turned on him too. If it had happened over and over… 

“Damn it, I’m sorry, I didn't mean to bring the mood down," Daisy backtracked halfheartedly. “Let’s just go-“ 

“How many was it?” Fitz asked. 

“What?” 

“How many?” Fitz repeated, meeting her eyes. “Houses.” He re-thought his question, and dropped his gaze to where their hands still sat intertwined. “I mean, you don’t have to answer, I was just...”

“Nineteen,” Daisy said. “Yeah. I got kicked out of more houses than years I was alive. Then I got to thinking, fuck that noise, you know? I ran away when I was sixteen, moved into that van, lived there ever since.” 

“Wow. That’s brave.” 

“It was stupid. And really dangerous.”

“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t brave.” 

He squeezed his hand again, and smiled at her. She smiled back, but for all she wanted to, she just couldn’t quite let the moment sit. 

“What about you, supergenius?” she teased, nudging him with their joined hands. “You moved countries at that age, didn’t you?” 

“Well, I mean, I was technically fourteen,” Fitz pointed out. “But I had a support system. I called my Mum every week. She sent me biscuits in the mail. I got teased relentlessly o’ course, but I also had a PhD at fourteen, so, what did they know, eh?”

“What did who know?”

Fitz and Daisy glanced around for the voice, and found Jemma picking her way down the under-bleachers toward them. She sat promptly and primly, studying their tearful faces and sad smiles. 

“Welcome to the pity party,” Daisy greeted. “I had a freak-out, Fitz came and found me, everything’s all good now but I still kinda feel like there’s concrete in my lungs. Just a quick update.” 

“Have you had enough water? Since the fight?” 

“No, Jemma, I haven’t had water. So unless you-” 

“Well, here then.” 

“- of course you do.” 

And the concrete might have got a little lighter, as she took the water bottle from Jemma. Satisfied that her mother-hen duties were complete for the time being, Jemma shuffled around to sit on Daisy’s other side.

“Watch out for the spider webs,” Fitz warned.

“Oh, never mind that,” she assured him, brushing some aside with her hand. She contemplated wiping her hand on the ground, but a look at the ground warned her against it. Instead she cleared her throat, tucked her hand into her lap and asked; “What are we talking about?” 

“Moving out at 16.” 

“Oh, I was fourteen, actually, when I attended an American university,” Jemma corrected. “I got myself into some rather sticky situations under bleachers like these. I found I quite preferred the library, though it’s not as good for crying.” 

“I wasn’t _crying-“_ Daisy protested. 

“Having a panic attack, then,” Jemma corrected. “You don’t have to give me the gory details, I’m just glad to know you’re okay. I’ve messaged May. She thought you might have taken off and done a runner somewhere in the suburbs.” 

“I was close,” Daisy confessed. “I didn’t want you guys to have to go running around after me, that’s all.” She snorted at the irony. 

Above them, the bleachers creaked and thudded under the weight of someone’s footsteps. The three of them huddled together a little on instinct, unsure where their current threat level fell, between imminent mortal danger, and children who had stayed up past curfew at a sleepover. But their fear was, fortunately, unfounded, as the head that shortly found its way to glance down between the gaps was none other than Coulson’s. He smiled at the unexpectedly cozy image. 

“Hey guys,” he greeted. They blinked up at him, bewildered, and he had to ask; “Watcha doing?”

“Hiding under the bleachers while we wait for May to come get us?” Daisy offered in much the same tone. There wasn’t much left to explain by now, anyway, and when nothing more was forthcoming, Coulson nodded to himself. 

“Cool,” he said. “Mind if I join?”

Upon their affirmative, he trotted down the stairs and jogged around the back, watching his head and glancing around at the things people had written, scratched, tied, and otherwise left under here. Eventually he sat, flicking the tails of his jacket out of the way and then pulling out a packet of Red Vines. Fitz’s eyes widened. 

“Did you have that in there the whole time?” 

He was quite sure, at one point, Coulson had flipped over a table. What kind of magical pockets did he have? 

“Yeah. Want some?” 

“Uh, yes,” Daisy answered for him, reaching out with enthusiasm. “I was the first one here, I get first pick of the Red Vines.”

When Fitz did not protest, Coulson moved the packet to offer them to her first. 

“Why _are_ we here?” he asked. 

She ripped the top off a Vine with her teeth and gestured to her mouth as she vigorously chewed. Coulson glanced at the others, but in true high school clique fashion, they were taking Daisy’s lead and refusing to talk. He looked to her once more, studying her expression to check whether or not he should be worried. Perhaps the issue was resolved, or perhaps she simply didn’t want to talk about it any more, but either way he was glad to note that the sense of crisis that had been in her eyes when she’d left them, was there no longer. He nodded his appreciation to the three of them, for having worked out whatever it was, and bit into his own Red Vine at last.


End file.
